What do your customers really want?

The first question that comes to the mind of anyone wanting to start a business is the question of what line of business to venture into (which is okay), but most business owners often forget to ask the second question which is equally very important as the first: “What do my customers really want?” (well if you should ask me, I would love to have a Bugatti Chiron — if it’s free though)

Most business owners end up not having the necessary data to make informed business decisions and as a result, a lot of businesses in Africa (and especially Nigeria) are being run mostly by trial and error. Here, business decisions can be made by Merchant A because Merchant B said it will work that way, or it is being assumed that that is what Merchant B is doing or just purely guesswork. (sighs. I know right; too many “or”).

Having the funds to start and run a business is just not enough! As a business owner, you must be able to have the details of what your customers really want at your fingertips. You must be able to easily detect which products are currently in high demand (and those that are not), the purchasing power of your customers and even knowing your customers that are your debtors. For you to not just successfully run your business but for it to also grow, your customers' data has to be not just captured but be at your fingertips at all times.

Hey, business owner! Do you know the number of customers that purchase a particular brand of noodles (pardon my example, I love noodles a lot) or are you only interested in seeing it being sold out? Do you know that the 10 cartons of spaghetti that you restock and by a week’s time are already sold out might be constantly bought by just one person and if he or she decides to start buying it someplace else, that the 10 cartons might still be there after a month?

I didn’t know this was a big problem for many merchants here in Nigeria until I got a complaint from a friend of mine who owned multiple stores in different locations across the country. He complained that one of the new stores he opened in a remote area was not making sales. He “assumed” that because he was the first to open a shop that big in the area, he would automatically record massive sales. After he complained to me and I did carry out a survey, I realized the problem was that despite his shop being big and fully stocked, he didn’t have what the people in that area needed, and to top it, he didn’t even have the data on his customers' purchasing pattern.

We spent the next couple of weeks gathering that data with the Geena App which we found to be not just efficient but captures a lot more data than we could imagine. Geena helped us to know the purchasing power of his customers, get and save their details, know their favorite products to easily reach out to them on new arrivals, and lots more.

To get started with the Geena App:

2. Register your products.

3. Add customer details (name and phone number mostly); this you can do before the sale or during the sale.

4. Start making sales.

You can view all customer details including the amount owed to and owed by the customer, their purchasing power, and a list of items they have purchased before by clicking on “Customers” on the menu bar.

It is time to start selling the proper way with Geena!

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